


Blackbox

by Philosophizes



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Bigender Character, Genderqueer Character, Genderqueer North Italy is important to me, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:29:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1146001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosophizes/pseuds/Philosophizes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a source of deep personal embarrassment for Ludwig Beilschmidt that he was taking a remedial math class. Good thing it turned out so well, then.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blackbox

It was a source of deep personal embarrassment for Ludwig Beilschmidt that he was taking a remedial math class.

People looked at him- tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, manly, serious- and they decided ‘physicist’ or ‘materials chemistry’ or ‘engineer’. Some of the more romantically-minded pegged him for a particularly buff, revolutionize-the-world IT student.

His major was photography.

In an ideal world, he’d have artistic inspiration that wasn’t described as ‘lacking’ and do fashion photography; and no one would ask him about the transcendental elements of postmodern theory in digital work. As this wasn’t an ideal world by any stretch of the imagination, Ludwig was going to get his degree, and then do family portraiture in one of those mall outlets.

Whenever he told people this, he got weird looks.

Ludwig looked hard at the math problem he’d just worked through, then at the answer on the board, and told himself that he _was_ going to pass this class and then he _was_ going to get his accountancy certificate.

He _was._

The person next to him reached over, erased half a line of his work, and wrote the same numbers in a different configuration, then went back to whatever non-math thing he _had_ been doing.

Ludwig frowned at the unasked for addition to his paper and half-glared at the person next to him.

He hadn’t really been paying attention to them, since he deplored the lack of academic discipline, but now he saw that his neighbor was reading the art history textbook Ludwig had back in his dorm room.

He glanced over when he saw Ludwig looking at him.

_‘That’s what you did wrong,’_ he wrote in the notebook he had on the desk for show. _‘I’m in here because of a HORRIBLE scheduling error I should be taking Math 332 right now.’_

This was incredibly undisciplined.

Note passing was for _children._

_‘You take Art 220?’_ Ludwig wrote back, shifting the notebook so he could write easier.

The other man beamed at him.

_‘Tuesdays/Thursdays with Hansen. You?’_

_‘Mondays/Fridays with Días.’_

_‘Art major?’_

_‘Business management/theater major math/psychology minor’_

So maybe he _wasn’t_ academically undisciplined. Ludwig felt underaccomplished now.

_‘Photography major accountancy certificate,’_ he wrote anyway.

_‘Feli. Early dinner?’_

_‘Ludwig. Sure.’_

* * *

Did it still count as an early dinner if he left the dining hall later than he’d ever had?

* * *

Ludwig was not a theater person and the only reason he was at the school theater was because he couldn’t remember if he and Feli were going for dinner today or not and he didn’t have his cell number.

“Lookin’ for somebody?” a woman who looked like Marlene Dietrich in a fedora asked. She even had the casual lean-against-the-wall down.

Apparently, the theater majors were doing something Jazz Age this semester.

“Er- Feli, I don’t know if you know him-”

“Ludwig.”

“Uh, yes, I’m-”

" _Ludwig.”_

_“Shit,”_ Ludwig said without thinking, and promptly shoved his fist against his mouth.

Feli struck a jazz singer pose and tipped his fedora.

“I look _good,_ don’t I?” he asked. “Let me go return this to Costuming and we’ll go for dinner.”

Ludwig trailed along behind him, confused and uncertain and interested. He vaguely noted the interesting lighting the blackbox had. He’d only ever been in his school auditorium before and seen pictures of professional multipurpose theaters.

Feli opened a door to what looked like backstage and started taking his clothes off. Ludwig started frantically looking somewhere else.

“No one else is around,” he said a little desperately, and started twisting the ring on his middle finger to stave off more nerves.

“Yep, just me and my senior thesis. I get to do a one-person performance, it’ll be fun! You should come.”

“And, uh, what is your thesis?”

“That gender is _weird,_ ” Feli said matter-of-factly.

“…It is?”

“Yeah, it is. What’s a woman, Ludwig? What’s a man? Why are they different?”

“Well, they-” Ludwig started to say, then mentally checked himself about how biology did not define gender.

“Women-” he tried again, and the realization that everything he was about to say would be horribly sexist swiftly descended.

He settled for a confused: “Um?”

“Exactly,” Feli replied.

New thoughts started happening, and Ludwig realized belatedly that there was a question _maybe_ he should have asked already.

“He, or she, or something else?”

“Yes. Do you want to go to the dining hall or get something from the food shop?”

* * *

If he wasn’t a theater person, how come he could explain to a prospective student tour group exactly what made a blackbox theater a blackbox theater?

* * *

Somehow Ludwig managed to hum full sections of the instrumentals accompanying Feli’s senior thesis performance _and_ still improve the scores on his math homework, despite doing it in the blackbox with less-than-optimal lighting _and_ being mostly distracted by the person on stage in front of him.

By the time he’d gotten the final project for his photography class that semester, it was really a foregone conclusion what his subject would be.

“Party hardest,” Feli remarked, flicking the grayscale inverted triangle pin on Ludwig’s camera bag.

“Can I use you as a photography model,” Ludwig blurted. “In your clothes. All of them. And things.”

“Sure.”

So Ludwig turned the lights way down and got the smallest spotlight he could and went to town.

He thought of grayscale and color spectrum and chiaroscuro in binary-not-brushstrokes and found Feli everywhere; the languishing anguished ecstatic wrathful exhausted esoteric salacious femme butch king androgyne queen metro macho _someone._

When he was done they turned the lights back on Feli rearranged the set.

* * *

How can one person wear so many different faces, and be true and beautiful in all of them?

* * *

When Ludwig got the portfolio back with words like _‘inspiring’_ and _‘talent’_ and _‘thoughtful’_ and _‘visionary’_ and _‘provoking’_ and _‘scandalous’_ written all over it he desperately wanted to say: “No, that’s not me, that’s Feli- Feli’s all that and words no one has ever even said,” but he accepted the praise with silence and left when dismissed.

He went straight to the blackbox and presented the portfolio and the comments sheet to Feli.

“This is what people think about you,” he told his friend.

Feli read it over and hummed to himself; then looked through the pictures and smiled.

“They’re yours,” Ludwig said. “They’re you.”

Feli smiled more and took the prints out carefully and, one by one, hung them in no real order on the back wall of the stage.

The lights went out and Feli did the entire thesis with one light on the pictures and one on himself; then left the stage to sit with Ludwig in the darkness, staring at the spot of light in front of them, and returned the gift with a shy kiss.


End file.
